Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then, when I took a walk by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the gates and looked through them along the road; or when, while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom, I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along dim sky-line--that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen--that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.
Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind's eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it--and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended--a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence.
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
Thanks, classiclit, for providing the text.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Literati
This was my end-of-semester reflection for my Book Editing class. The last paragraph is particularly amusing because it's just about the most pretentious thing anyone has ever written, yet I'm trying to use it to explain that editors aren't pretentious.
When I first signed up for the Book Editing class, I honestly didn’t know whether I wanted to be an editor or not, mostly because I promised myself when I came to Emerson that I would be open to the many and varied opportunities that exist in publishing. "Sure you may think you want to be an editor,” I told myself. “But everyone who goes into publishing thinks they want to be an editor because they don’t know what else is out there."
This attitude of openness was a good one to have at the beginning of my Emerson career. But at the end of my first year—after purposely seeking out publishing experiences outside of the editorial world—I am pretty confident in saying that I want to work in editorial. Yes, production, publicity, and marketing are all fun fields. And yes, I’m capable of understanding the financial and legal aspects of publishing. But nothing compares to the thrill of working with ideas, people, and words as an editor.
As an undergraduate, I majored in English literature and psychology. I remember saying that I thought I would love to work in counseling if I could only have intelligent, highly verbal clients. Of course, there is no field of psychology that would allow a therapist to have only these types of clients. But the author/editor relationship contains some of the elements I liked about psychology: discussing complex, intellectual, personal issues from multiple perspectives; building good rapport; and adapting one’s techniques depending on who is sitting on the other side of the desk. I really enjoy the challenge of understanding and working with all sorts of people, and the author/editor relationship provides many such opportunities.
I love working with ideas—and their mode of transportation, words—just as much as I love working with people. There is something invigorating about seeing the potential in a manuscript and knowing that you could be the fresh set of eyes that helps it reach that potential. The non-fiction ethnographic manuscript I worked with in this class has so much potential both as a literary work and as a book that might make some of its readers think differently about the world. Getting the chance to work with books like that would not only be fun; it would be meaningful.
Because I am much more focused on big ideas and themes, I would like to be an acquisitions and/or developmental editor. I would love to build my own lists, and I’d love to help polish every book on that list. When a young editor from Beacon Press came to our class and talked about starting her own list of graphic novels, I got really excited to think that she had been sitting in my position just a few years ago.
Speaking of Beacon Press, that is one of the ideal types of houses I would like to work for. I am much more attracted to small, independent houses because I think I’d get more opportunities to try different things. They usually need staff members to have broader job descriptions, and they aren’t so set in their ways that they can’t recognize fresh, innovative ideas. I also love that Beacon Press is mission-driven; I strongly desire to work for a house that publishes important, elegant books, especially non-fiction.
In addition to small presses like Beacon, I could also see myself working for a university press, particularly one that does quite a few books that cross over into trade. I like books that explore complex ideas, but I especially like books that can express these ideas in such a way that an educated, non-expert can understand and be moved by them. This allows the books to have more influence, and it also usually means that they avoided the “dry as dust” pitfall that so many academic books succumb to.
One final, semi-facetious note about working as an editor: I like that you get to be smart without being pretentious. There aren’t too many editors whose walls are ostentatiously covered with diplomas or who expect instant respect the minute they spout off their job titles. Nevertheless, most editors are well-read with a broad range of interests, have a fast learning curve, invent creative and innovative ways to solve problems, and balance technical precision with aesthetic sensibility. If that’s not intelligence, I don’t know what is.
When I first signed up for the Book Editing class, I honestly didn’t know whether I wanted to be an editor or not, mostly because I promised myself when I came to Emerson that I would be open to the many and varied opportunities that exist in publishing. "Sure you may think you want to be an editor,” I told myself. “But everyone who goes into publishing thinks they want to be an editor because they don’t know what else is out there."
This attitude of openness was a good one to have at the beginning of my Emerson career. But at the end of my first year—after purposely seeking out publishing experiences outside of the editorial world—I am pretty confident in saying that I want to work in editorial. Yes, production, publicity, and marketing are all fun fields. And yes, I’m capable of understanding the financial and legal aspects of publishing. But nothing compares to the thrill of working with ideas, people, and words as an editor.
As an undergraduate, I majored in English literature and psychology. I remember saying that I thought I would love to work in counseling if I could only have intelligent, highly verbal clients. Of course, there is no field of psychology that would allow a therapist to have only these types of clients. But the author/editor relationship contains some of the elements I liked about psychology: discussing complex, intellectual, personal issues from multiple perspectives; building good rapport; and adapting one’s techniques depending on who is sitting on the other side of the desk. I really enjoy the challenge of understanding and working with all sorts of people, and the author/editor relationship provides many such opportunities.
I love working with ideas—and their mode of transportation, words—just as much as I love working with people. There is something invigorating about seeing the potential in a manuscript and knowing that you could be the fresh set of eyes that helps it reach that potential. The non-fiction ethnographic manuscript I worked with in this class has so much potential both as a literary work and as a book that might make some of its readers think differently about the world. Getting the chance to work with books like that would not only be fun; it would be meaningful.
Because I am much more focused on big ideas and themes, I would like to be an acquisitions and/or developmental editor. I would love to build my own lists, and I’d love to help polish every book on that list. When a young editor from Beacon Press came to our class and talked about starting her own list of graphic novels, I got really excited to think that she had been sitting in my position just a few years ago.
Speaking of Beacon Press, that is one of the ideal types of houses I would like to work for. I am much more attracted to small, independent houses because I think I’d get more opportunities to try different things. They usually need staff members to have broader job descriptions, and they aren’t so set in their ways that they can’t recognize fresh, innovative ideas. I also love that Beacon Press is mission-driven; I strongly desire to work for a house that publishes important, elegant books, especially non-fiction.
In addition to small presses like Beacon, I could also see myself working for a university press, particularly one that does quite a few books that cross over into trade. I like books that explore complex ideas, but I especially like books that can express these ideas in such a way that an educated, non-expert can understand and be moved by them. This allows the books to have more influence, and it also usually means that they avoided the “dry as dust” pitfall that so many academic books succumb to.
One final, semi-facetious note about working as an editor: I like that you get to be smart without being pretentious. There aren’t too many editors whose walls are ostentatiously covered with diplomas or who expect instant respect the minute they spout off their job titles. Nevertheless, most editors are well-read with a broad range of interests, have a fast learning curve, invent creative and innovative ways to solve problems, and balance technical precision with aesthetic sensibility. If that’s not intelligence, I don’t know what is.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Patricia Smith Profile
Just a few days after writing a post about how I won't be writing as many posts, I am writing a new post. (And yes, the obnoxious repetition of the word "post" in that sentence was intentional.) I just really want to share a profile piece I wrote for my Magazine Publishing Overview class. I had a lot of fun writing it and I think some of you might be interested in learning more about one of my favorite poets, Patricia Smith. Keep in mind though that the purpose of this writing assignment was to produce writing in the style and voice of my class's magazine. (We are collectively putting together part of a "dummy issue" for a new mag called Junct, a culture magazine for 20-somethings. Our tagline is "Come Together. Right Now." which I love.) So because this assignment was for a fictional magazine, my professor said that we had full license to make things up for expediency's sake. To my knowledge, everything included in this piece is true, but it hasn't been fact-checked and all Patricia Smith quotes came from interviews conducted by other people (see list of references, below). So this is just a disclaimer to say that standards of journalistic excellence may be somewhat lacking. :-) But anyways, without further ado, the profile:
The Common Thread
Poet Patricia Smith charms the slam community, the elite literati, and audiences around the world.
by Jessica Colund
"They call me skinhead," says Patricia Smith, defiantly speaking in the voice of a white supremacist, "and I got my own beauty."
The audience is no longer seeing and hearing an African-American female poet; they are only seeing and hearing a bitter, prejudiced white man whose face "is huge and pockmarked, / scraped pink and brilliant, apple-cheeked." By the end of the piece, the audience—individually and collectively—have briefly taken on the persona of this man and seen the world through his eyes.
Smith was inspired to write "Skinhead" because she has always been interested in exploring the fundamental similarities between people who seem to be polar opposites. When she heard an interview with a neo-Nazi who painted a swastika on Plymouth Rock, she wondered what she had in common with him. "This guy is spewing all this hatred," she explains. "I thought, at some point, we started at a common point. He moved in that direction. I moved in another direction. So I wanted to write a poem that would bring us back to a common area."
Entering the mind of such an angry, twisted person is uncomfortable for many people, including Smith herself. When she first started to read this poem for audiences, a distinctive, unplanned accent developed. "I didn’t know where it came from," says Smith. "I think I got a little bit more into his head than I wanted to...I found myself having a hard time pulling out of the poem when it was done."
Nevertheless, Smith’s persona poems connect with many people because they find points of common humanity between the audience and the speaker in the poem. She says that these poems "force us outside of ourselves—which we should all in a perfect world do naturally anyway. We should strive to relate to whoever it is that we meet, or we don’t meet, anyway. I mean, that’s what the human race is supposedly all about."
Smith has presented her poetry everywhere from hole-in-the-wall Chicago bars and a train platform in Berlin to Carnegie Hall and Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival. People from every walk of life—age, race, class, educational background—gather together to hear Smith and be caught up in the vortex of her poems as they take on personas that are simultaneously familiar and alien.
The Slam Diva
Smith began her poetry career delivering spoken word poems in slam poetry competitions. She grew up on the west side of Chicago, which is known as "ground zero" of the slam poetry movement. Poetry slams are three-round competitions in which five amateur judges eliminate about half the poets each round. The last poet standing is the winner. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Slam Poetry describes the stage presence of these early slammers:
As a journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times in the 1980s, Smith was first introduced to slam poetry when she reported on the city’s first Turf Poetry Festival. She gave her first performance during an open mic event at the Green Mill, a Chicago cocktail lounge that hosts the famous Uptown Poetry Slam. Her thrilling performances and powerful narrative poems quickly won her the respect and admiration of Chicago’s slam community.
One member of this close-knit artistic group, Michael Brown, eventually became her husband. The pair of sizzling slammers moved to Boston in 1990 and brought the spoken word revolution with them. They co-founded the Boston Slam, which meets at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. Slam’s growing popularity in Boston helped it spread to other parts of the country, and it soon become a national phenomenon.
At the forefront of this exploding movement, Smith became quite a rising star herself. She won the individual title at the very first National Poetry Slam Championships in 1990, and she went on to reclaim her crown three more times in 1991, 1993, and 1995. One of the pieces she performed in the 1996 championships, "Undertaker," was turned into a five-minute independent film that won awards at the Sundance and San Francisco Film Festivals.
One of Smith’s greatest contributions to slam poetry was that her well-crafted verse legitimized the movement in the minds of the literati. Many of these highly educated individuals—some might call them snobs—believed that slam poetry was only about passionate performance and that there was very little linguistic value of the kind found in traditional, printed poems. Smith’s powerful voice cut through the "page versus stage" debate and proved that good poetry will succeed in both worlds. Just as her persona poems bring together people of various backgrounds, so her artistic style appeals to people with widely differing poetic tastes.
The Fall from Grace
While Smith’s career as a slam poet was taking off, her day job was writing columns for the Boston Globe. She had almost as many fans of her journalism as of her poetry; many readers were touched by the way she made her subjects come alive. Smith tried to express the full humanity of the people in her news stories, much as she did when writing poetry. In fact, she got into writing her persona poems because of her career as a journalist. Writing poetry was an important way for her to process the troubling events she reported on every day.
In both her poems and newspaper articles, Smith recognized that she was describing only one moment of many in her subjects’ lives. Each person’s life is far longer and more complex than the one event described in the piece, and she tried to make that richness evident in her writing. She explains, "I would see a news story and I would think, 'Well, where was the person in this story before the instance of this story. Where did they go after the story?' It’s like you place yourself at a prospective place in the story and try to write your way out of it."
Smith’s poignant and incisive stories earned her a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize. And that’s when the ugly truth came out: Smith had fabricated sources and quotes in a few of her columns for the Globe, violating the first rule of journalism ethics. She says that she did it "to create the desired impact or slam home a salient point." But while her journalist’s voice and eye often enriched her poems, her poet’s imagination never should have entered the fact-filled world of reporting.
To her credit, Smith admits that her actions cannot be justified by her lack of time, by her drive to succeed, by her desire to produce a shining column every week. She says that these hollow excuses "point to the cursed fallibility of human beings, our tendency to spit in the face of common sense." Some of Smith’s colleagues and readers relished the downfall of a heroine while others felt betrayed, disillusioned, and disappointed. But despite her immense ability to stir readers’ thoughts and emotions, Smith never was a heroine. She was only a human being like the rest of us.
Smith’s life began to spiral downhill at a progressively faster rate. She lost her job at the Globe, as well as her American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award and her Pulitzer nomination. At the same time, her marriage went from bad to worse and eventually disintegrated completely. Her health deteriorated to the point that she could not leave her house for several weeks.
But like an arsonist phoenix rising from the ashes of her own making, Smith refused to let these events be the end for her. Not knowing where else to go, Smith returned to her hometown of Chicago and to her last remaining source of strength—slam poetry. She gave the most memorable performance of her life at the Chicago Cultural Center in front of the community she had always been real with, the one group who would not turn aside in disgust because of her professional sin and her personal despair. To thunderous applause and a standing ovation, Smith laid bare her soul.
The Voice of Humanity
Smith continued to pour her heart into her poetry. Before the incident at the Globe, she had already published three books of poetry, and her work had also appeared in literary journals such as The Paris Review and TriQuarterly. But the applause from critics grew increasingly louder. Teahouse of the Almighty, her first published poetry book in over a decade, was a 2005 National Poetry Series winner. Smith also won the very first Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the poetry category. Perhaps most notably, Blood Dazzler, her book of poems about Hurricane Katrina, was a National Book Award finalist.
Blood Dazzler combines news headlines with deeply personal stories. Smith decided to write it when she "realized that there were quite a few people who wanted to file Katrina away and have it be done so they could get on with their lives...[but] we can’t fold this away; it has to be something that remains in the public consciousness." In the midst of her literary success, Smith’s goal remains the same as when she was first starting out as a slam poet: She hopes her poetry will lend a voice to those who are often overlooked or forgotten and help people see the common thread of humanity that binds us all together despite our differences.
Though Smith no longer competes in poetry slams, her spoken word roots are evident in her heartfelt poetry readings in which she captivates audiences the minute she opens her mouth. But her strong appeal to so many different people does not depend solely on her stellar performances. Bursting with passion, grittiness, heartache, and redemption, Smith’s poems are a rich tapestry of what it means to be human.
Group photo of Boston-based slam poets and musicians: Jeff Robinson, Blake Newman, Iyeoka Okoawo, Richard Cambrige, Askia Toure, Patricia Smith, Regie Gibson, & Quincy Troup at Hi-N-Dry Studio. (I've actually heard several of these people at the Lizard Lounge! Iyeoka Okoawo has such powerful poetry and her delivery is so moving.)
References
Patricia Smith's Website
University of Illinois--Patricia Smith Site
E-Poets.Net
Interview about Persona Poems
Interview about Blood Dazzler
A Note of Apology (Patricia Smith's final editorial in the Globe) Note: I accessed this through Emerson's subscription to ProQuest.
PoetrySlam.Com
Photo Credits
01
02
03
04
05
One of the benefits of online publication: Watch videos of Patricia Smith's poetry performances!
Patricia Smith at the Uptown Poetry Slam in Chicago
Patricia Smith performing "Skinhead"
Patricia Smith performing in the Lizard Lounge's poetry jam (After the traditional slam competition, the Lizard Lounge features one poet who performs with music in a "poetry jam." It's so fun!)
The Common Thread
Poet Patricia Smith charms the slam community, the elite literati, and audiences around the world.
by Jessica Colund
"They call me skinhead," says Patricia Smith, defiantly speaking in the voice of a white supremacist, "and I got my own beauty."
The audience is no longer seeing and hearing an African-American female poet; they are only seeing and hearing a bitter, prejudiced white man whose face "is huge and pockmarked, / scraped pink and brilliant, apple-cheeked." By the end of the piece, the audience—individually and collectively—have briefly taken on the persona of this man and seen the world through his eyes.
Smith was inspired to write "Skinhead" because she has always been interested in exploring the fundamental similarities between people who seem to be polar opposites. When she heard an interview with a neo-Nazi who painted a swastika on Plymouth Rock, she wondered what she had in common with him. "This guy is spewing all this hatred," she explains. "I thought, at some point, we started at a common point. He moved in that direction. I moved in another direction. So I wanted to write a poem that would bring us back to a common area."
Entering the mind of such an angry, twisted person is uncomfortable for many people, including Smith herself. When she first started to read this poem for audiences, a distinctive, unplanned accent developed. "I didn’t know where it came from," says Smith. "I think I got a little bit more into his head than I wanted to...I found myself having a hard time pulling out of the poem when it was done."
Nevertheless, Smith’s persona poems connect with many people because they find points of common humanity between the audience and the speaker in the poem. She says that these poems "force us outside of ourselves—which we should all in a perfect world do naturally anyway. We should strive to relate to whoever it is that we meet, or we don’t meet, anyway. I mean, that’s what the human race is supposedly all about."
Smith has presented her poetry everywhere from hole-in-the-wall Chicago bars and a train platform in Berlin to Carnegie Hall and Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival. People from every walk of life—age, race, class, educational background—gather together to hear Smith and be caught up in the vortex of her poems as they take on personas that are simultaneously familiar and alien.
The Slam Diva
Smith began her poetry career delivering spoken word poems in slam poetry competitions. She grew up on the west side of Chicago, which is known as "ground zero" of the slam poetry movement. Poetry slams are three-round competitions in which five amateur judges eliminate about half the poets each round. The last poet standing is the winner. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Slam Poetry describes the stage presence of these early slammers:
"The experimenters in this new style of poetry presentation gyrated, rotated, spewed, and stepped their words along the bar top, dancing between the bottles, bellowing out the backdoor, standing on the street or on their stools, turning the west side of Chicago into a rainforest of dripping whispers or a blast furnace of fiery elongated syllables, phrases, snatches of scripts, and verse that electrified the night."
As a journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times in the 1980s, Smith was first introduced to slam poetry when she reported on the city’s first Turf Poetry Festival. She gave her first performance during an open mic event at the Green Mill, a Chicago cocktail lounge that hosts the famous Uptown Poetry Slam. Her thrilling performances and powerful narrative poems quickly won her the respect and admiration of Chicago’s slam community.
One member of this close-knit artistic group, Michael Brown, eventually became her husband. The pair of sizzling slammers moved to Boston in 1990 and brought the spoken word revolution with them. They co-founded the Boston Slam, which meets at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. Slam’s growing popularity in Boston helped it spread to other parts of the country, and it soon become a national phenomenon.
At the forefront of this exploding movement, Smith became quite a rising star herself. She won the individual title at the very first National Poetry Slam Championships in 1990, and she went on to reclaim her crown three more times in 1991, 1993, and 1995. One of the pieces she performed in the 1996 championships, "Undertaker," was turned into a five-minute independent film that won awards at the Sundance and San Francisco Film Festivals.
One of Smith’s greatest contributions to slam poetry was that her well-crafted verse legitimized the movement in the minds of the literati. Many of these highly educated individuals—some might call them snobs—believed that slam poetry was only about passionate performance and that there was very little linguistic value of the kind found in traditional, printed poems. Smith’s powerful voice cut through the "page versus stage" debate and proved that good poetry will succeed in both worlds. Just as her persona poems bring together people of various backgrounds, so her artistic style appeals to people with widely differing poetic tastes.
The Fall from Grace
While Smith’s career as a slam poet was taking off, her day job was writing columns for the Boston Globe. She had almost as many fans of her journalism as of her poetry; many readers were touched by the way she made her subjects come alive. Smith tried to express the full humanity of the people in her news stories, much as she did when writing poetry. In fact, she got into writing her persona poems because of her career as a journalist. Writing poetry was an important way for her to process the troubling events she reported on every day.
In both her poems and newspaper articles, Smith recognized that she was describing only one moment of many in her subjects’ lives. Each person’s life is far longer and more complex than the one event described in the piece, and she tried to make that richness evident in her writing. She explains, "I would see a news story and I would think, 'Well, where was the person in this story before the instance of this story. Where did they go after the story?' It’s like you place yourself at a prospective place in the story and try to write your way out of it."
Smith’s poignant and incisive stories earned her a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize. And that’s when the ugly truth came out: Smith had fabricated sources and quotes in a few of her columns for the Globe, violating the first rule of journalism ethics. She says that she did it "to create the desired impact or slam home a salient point." But while her journalist’s voice and eye often enriched her poems, her poet’s imagination never should have entered the fact-filled world of reporting.
To her credit, Smith admits that her actions cannot be justified by her lack of time, by her drive to succeed, by her desire to produce a shining column every week. She says that these hollow excuses "point to the cursed fallibility of human beings, our tendency to spit in the face of common sense." Some of Smith’s colleagues and readers relished the downfall of a heroine while others felt betrayed, disillusioned, and disappointed. But despite her immense ability to stir readers’ thoughts and emotions, Smith never was a heroine. She was only a human being like the rest of us.
Smith’s life began to spiral downhill at a progressively faster rate. She lost her job at the Globe, as well as her American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award and her Pulitzer nomination. At the same time, her marriage went from bad to worse and eventually disintegrated completely. Her health deteriorated to the point that she could not leave her house for several weeks.
But like an arsonist phoenix rising from the ashes of her own making, Smith refused to let these events be the end for her. Not knowing where else to go, Smith returned to her hometown of Chicago and to her last remaining source of strength—slam poetry. She gave the most memorable performance of her life at the Chicago Cultural Center in front of the community she had always been real with, the one group who would not turn aside in disgust because of her professional sin and her personal despair. To thunderous applause and a standing ovation, Smith laid bare her soul.
The Voice of Humanity
Smith continued to pour her heart into her poetry. Before the incident at the Globe, she had already published three books of poetry, and her work had also appeared in literary journals such as The Paris Review and TriQuarterly. But the applause from critics grew increasingly louder. Teahouse of the Almighty, her first published poetry book in over a decade, was a 2005 National Poetry Series winner. Smith also won the very first Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the poetry category. Perhaps most notably, Blood Dazzler, her book of poems about Hurricane Katrina, was a National Book Award finalist.
Blood Dazzler combines news headlines with deeply personal stories. Smith decided to write it when she "realized that there were quite a few people who wanted to file Katrina away and have it be done so they could get on with their lives...[but] we can’t fold this away; it has to be something that remains in the public consciousness." In the midst of her literary success, Smith’s goal remains the same as when she was first starting out as a slam poet: She hopes her poetry will lend a voice to those who are often overlooked or forgotten and help people see the common thread of humanity that binds us all together despite our differences.
Though Smith no longer competes in poetry slams, her spoken word roots are evident in her heartfelt poetry readings in which she captivates audiences the minute she opens her mouth. But her strong appeal to so many different people does not depend solely on her stellar performances. Bursting with passion, grittiness, heartache, and redemption, Smith’s poems are a rich tapestry of what it means to be human.
Group photo of Boston-based slam poets and musicians: Jeff Robinson, Blake Newman, Iyeoka Okoawo, Richard Cambrige, Askia Toure, Patricia Smith, Regie Gibson, & Quincy Troup at Hi-N-Dry Studio. (I've actually heard several of these people at the Lizard Lounge! Iyeoka Okoawo has such powerful poetry and her delivery is so moving.)
References
Patricia Smith's Website
University of Illinois--Patricia Smith Site
E-Poets.Net
Interview about Persona Poems
Interview about Blood Dazzler
A Note of Apology (Patricia Smith's final editorial in the Globe) Note: I accessed this through Emerson's subscription to ProQuest.
PoetrySlam.Com
Photo Credits
01
02
03
04
05
One of the benefits of online publication: Watch videos of Patricia Smith's poetry performances!
Patricia Smith at the Uptown Poetry Slam in Chicago
Patricia Smith performing "Skinhead"
Patricia Smith performing in the Lizard Lounge's poetry jam (After the traditional slam competition, the Lizard Lounge features one poet who performs with music in a "poetry jam." It's so fun!)
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Long Time Gone
Hey blogosphere!
It's been a while since I've written. I've been extremely busy because, thankfully, I got a job! I've been working in the legal department of a large biotech company for the past three weeks. It's a full-time job, which is what I really wanted/needed, even though it makes me incredibly busy. It's a pretty administrative job (it can be a wee bit boring), but I am NOT complaining. I am so grateful to have a job, especially in this economy. Plus the location is great; it's right between school and home. And the people I work with are SO nice and helpful. It's really a perfect job to coincide with grad school.
Additionally, I've neglected this blog because almost all of my personal (i.e., non-school) writing time has been devoted to journaling for the past month and a half. Sometimes it's comforting to know that I'm writing in a physical book that could be burned or torn or thrown into the ocean, destroying the only copy of whatever I had just written. I think a lot about my "digital footprint" and how anything I ever send absent-mindedly off into cyberspace will be there forever. Good thing I have no intention of becoming a high-profile politician or businesswoman.
Anyways, I just really wanted to share with all of you my good news (getting a job) and to say that I will write as often as I can, but don't be surprised if the blog doesn't get updated as regularly as it used to be. Until next time then, I bid you all a very fond farewell.
It's been a while since I've written. I've been extremely busy because, thankfully, I got a job! I've been working in the legal department of a large biotech company for the past three weeks. It's a full-time job, which is what I really wanted/needed, even though it makes me incredibly busy. It's a pretty administrative job (it can be a wee bit boring), but I am NOT complaining. I am so grateful to have a job, especially in this economy. Plus the location is great; it's right between school and home. And the people I work with are SO nice and helpful. It's really a perfect job to coincide with grad school.
Additionally, I've neglected this blog because almost all of my personal (i.e., non-school) writing time has been devoted to journaling for the past month and a half. Sometimes it's comforting to know that I'm writing in a physical book that could be burned or torn or thrown into the ocean, destroying the only copy of whatever I had just written. I think a lot about my "digital footprint" and how anything I ever send absent-mindedly off into cyberspace will be there forever. Good thing I have no intention of becoming a high-profile politician or businesswoman.
Anyways, I just really wanted to share with all of you my good news (getting a job) and to say that I will write as often as I can, but don't be surprised if the blog doesn't get updated as regularly as it used to be. Until next time then, I bid you all a very fond farewell.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Back in Beantown
I am officially back in Boston, trying to remember what "my real life" is like. Being back in Minnesota for almost a month made me feel like Boston had been a dream or a study abroad trip. When I checked in at the Minneapolis airport, the ticket agent said to me, "Oh you're going back home." I was taken aback; no, didn't he realize that I'd been "going home for Christmas," that Minneapolis was my home? But I heard myself agreeing with him. Yes, I live in Boston. My apartment is there, my school is there, my job prospects are there, my internship is there, my church is there, my adventure is there.
Ah, adventures. I set off for Boston several months ago, knowing it would be an adventure. But this excursion is a longer, grittier adventure than any I've ever had before. When I traveled alone to England for a whole summer, that was certainly an adventure. But it ended after three months. My Boston adventure is not some whirlwind trip filled with excitement and non-stop action. It's real life. "And that has made all the difference."
You all may be sick of me saying this, but I really have this sense that I was "meant" to come to Boston, that this adventure is a crucial step in transforming me into the person I am meant to be. And I don't say this lightly: God has been working in my life since I came to Boston in ways I've never felt before. I keep telling people that "things just happen in Boston." I don't know how else to say it--things are happening in my life here; nothing is stagnant; and there's a sense of purpose in all that is transpiring. On my trip back to Minnesota, I saw how I really have become a slightly different person already. I'm not trying to brag, and I hope this blog post doesn't sound that way at all. I know I sometimes have a tendency to be prideful, but that's not at all how I feel when I think about how my Boston adventure has been changing me as a person. Rather, I feel gratitude and awe and excitement and inspiration and hope.
So there you have it, folks. I am back in Boston and I'm looking into the face of the Unknown with a "bring it on" smile. ;-)
Ah, adventures. I set off for Boston several months ago, knowing it would be an adventure. But this excursion is a longer, grittier adventure than any I've ever had before. When I traveled alone to England for a whole summer, that was certainly an adventure. But it ended after three months. My Boston adventure is not some whirlwind trip filled with excitement and non-stop action. It's real life. "And that has made all the difference."
You all may be sick of me saying this, but I really have this sense that I was "meant" to come to Boston, that this adventure is a crucial step in transforming me into the person I am meant to be. And I don't say this lightly: God has been working in my life since I came to Boston in ways I've never felt before. I keep telling people that "things just happen in Boston." I don't know how else to say it--things are happening in my life here; nothing is stagnant; and there's a sense of purpose in all that is transpiring. On my trip back to Minnesota, I saw how I really have become a slightly different person already. I'm not trying to brag, and I hope this blog post doesn't sound that way at all. I know I sometimes have a tendency to be prideful, but that's not at all how I feel when I think about how my Boston adventure has been changing me as a person. Rather, I feel gratitude and awe and excitement and inspiration and hope.
So there you have it, folks. I am back in Boston and I'm looking into the face of the Unknown with a "bring it on" smile. ;-)
Friday, January 1, 2010
The Year in Review (2009)
Though New Year’s kind of seems to fit in the "bogus holiday" category rather than the "deep and meaningful holiday" category, I actually really like it because I like reflecting on the major changes and challenges that occurred in the past year, and I like setting goals for the coming year.
Here's my personal review of 2009:
Winter (January-March)
I was working at the non-profit Christians for Biblical Equality as an editorial and administrative assistant. In March, I was given full-time hours and additional duties in the finance, development, and bookstore departments. I was also still working at the Barnes & Noble in the Eden Prairie Mall, though I did reduce my hours significantly when my CBE job became full-time.
Spring (April-June)
I finally got so fed up with Barnes & Noble that I quit. I hadn’t needed the job for several months, though the [very small amount of] extra income had been nice. I believe the “straw that broke the camel’s back” was when management decided to put yet another photocopied flyer in each of the booksellers’ mailboxes. This particular flyer showed a picture of a well-organized bookshelf next to a messy one and had a list of bullet points describing the above pictures. Please, like anyone could possibly be so stupid as to need such a flyer!
I got my official acceptance into both Emerson and NYU’s publishing grad programs. And I also got my tuition/financial aid statements from both of these schools, which caused me to ask myself perpetually, “Do you really think you can do this? Can you really make this happen without ending up on the streets?”
Summer (July-September)
My struggle over whether to move to Boston to go to Emerson intensified. My parents thought it was a risk that wasn’t worth taking. I, on the other hand, thought that if I didn’t take this risk, I would regret it for the rest of my life. If I couldn’t bring myself to do something like this now, would I ever end up living the exciting life I’d always dreamed of?
In August, I quit my full-time job in the middle of the worst economy since the Depression. I rented an SUV and drove to Boston, along with Ann without whom I would not have made it. Once we got to Boston, we immediately faced a bunch of mini-problems that seemed like a bigger deal to me than perhaps they should have. First of all, we had to carry all my heavy stuff in at 11:00 at night. Fortunately, the hurricane-like rainstorm had slowed to a drizzle. Then, we realized that the toilet wasn’t working properly and we didn’t have a plunger. Or toilet paper. Or a shower curtain. The next morning, I managed to lock myself out of the apartment by bringing a key that fit into the lock but wouldn’t actually open the door. Then we rented a U-Haul van, got lost in Boston’s hopelessly confusing and unmarked roads, got to IKEA and purchased a huge amount of HEAVY furniture, drove back to my apartment, and carried all of that back-breakingly heavy furniture inside (again, while it was raining). That was all within my first 24 hours in Boston.
But that was only the beginning of the challenges. Classes started in September, which actually felt like a breeze. I have handled school my entire life, but this was the first time I was encountering the major real-life dilemmas that come from relocating, becoming independent, and living as a real adult.
Fall (October-December)
This year, October was the cruelest month (sorry, T.S. Eliot). I’d had two interviews for a dream job as the Director of Communications at my church. I knew I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatched, but I really thought I would get the job. The people interviewing me were so positive, and the position seemed perfect for me, albeit a big step up from anything I’d ever done before. Unfortunately, I was not offered the job.
Also in October, my roommate decided that she wanted to break our lease and move out. This alone would have caused some amount of stress because it’s very difficult to try to find a new roommate in the middle of a semester. However, despite my efforts to maintain a polite and peaceful living environment, the tensions between us quickly grew out of hand to the point that we barely spoke to one another. This eventually made my apartment feel like the place I had to go to avoid living on the streets rather than my home.
But I am not trying to whine and complain and ask for pity. Though October was difficult for me, I grew a lot through it and I really am glad for these challenges. In November, though my circumstances hadn’t changed, my attitude had. I no longer felt that I would simply die if things didn’t work out as I’d hoped they would; instead, I began to truly believe that God’s grace is enough to get me through anything (see my “Yes, No, Wait?” blog post).
I also started a social media/PR internship at Harvard Common Press in November. I am helping out with a travel newsletter/blog that they are starting up. I’ve been learning a lot about how companies can use social networking and new media to create an online presence for themselves and inspire people to visit their website.
In December, my old roommate moved out, and my new roommate will be moving in any day now. I’m still waiting to hear about a job I interviewed for, but things sound fairly promising. (But again, I should not count my chickens before they hatch!) I finished up my first semester of classes, which ended up being really fun and enlightening. And now I’m back in Minnesota for Christmas and New Year’s.
2009 was a defining year of my life, and I am so glad that I took the risk of moving to Boston. I am looking forward to new challenges and triumphs in 2010.
Here's my personal review of 2009:
Winter (January-March)
I was working at the non-profit Christians for Biblical Equality as an editorial and administrative assistant. In March, I was given full-time hours and additional duties in the finance, development, and bookstore departments. I was also still working at the Barnes & Noble in the Eden Prairie Mall, though I did reduce my hours significantly when my CBE job became full-time.
Spring (April-June)
I finally got so fed up with Barnes & Noble that I quit. I hadn’t needed the job for several months, though the [very small amount of] extra income had been nice. I believe the “straw that broke the camel’s back” was when management decided to put yet another photocopied flyer in each of the booksellers’ mailboxes. This particular flyer showed a picture of a well-organized bookshelf next to a messy one and had a list of bullet points describing the above pictures. Please, like anyone could possibly be so stupid as to need such a flyer!
I got my official acceptance into both Emerson and NYU’s publishing grad programs. And I also got my tuition/financial aid statements from both of these schools, which caused me to ask myself perpetually, “Do you really think you can do this? Can you really make this happen without ending up on the streets?”
Summer (July-September)
My struggle over whether to move to Boston to go to Emerson intensified. My parents thought it was a risk that wasn’t worth taking. I, on the other hand, thought that if I didn’t take this risk, I would regret it for the rest of my life. If I couldn’t bring myself to do something like this now, would I ever end up living the exciting life I’d always dreamed of?
In August, I quit my full-time job in the middle of the worst economy since the Depression. I rented an SUV and drove to Boston, along with Ann without whom I would not have made it. Once we got to Boston, we immediately faced a bunch of mini-problems that seemed like a bigger deal to me than perhaps they should have. First of all, we had to carry all my heavy stuff in at 11:00 at night. Fortunately, the hurricane-like rainstorm had slowed to a drizzle. Then, we realized that the toilet wasn’t working properly and we didn’t have a plunger. Or toilet paper. Or a shower curtain. The next morning, I managed to lock myself out of the apartment by bringing a key that fit into the lock but wouldn’t actually open the door. Then we rented a U-Haul van, got lost in Boston’s hopelessly confusing and unmarked roads, got to IKEA and purchased a huge amount of HEAVY furniture, drove back to my apartment, and carried all of that back-breakingly heavy furniture inside (again, while it was raining). That was all within my first 24 hours in Boston.
But that was only the beginning of the challenges. Classes started in September, which actually felt like a breeze. I have handled school my entire life, but this was the first time I was encountering the major real-life dilemmas that come from relocating, becoming independent, and living as a real adult.
Fall (October-December)
This year, October was the cruelest month (sorry, T.S. Eliot). I’d had two interviews for a dream job as the Director of Communications at my church. I knew I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatched, but I really thought I would get the job. The people interviewing me were so positive, and the position seemed perfect for me, albeit a big step up from anything I’d ever done before. Unfortunately, I was not offered the job.
Also in October, my roommate decided that she wanted to break our lease and move out. This alone would have caused some amount of stress because it’s very difficult to try to find a new roommate in the middle of a semester. However, despite my efforts to maintain a polite and peaceful living environment, the tensions between us quickly grew out of hand to the point that we barely spoke to one another. This eventually made my apartment feel like the place I had to go to avoid living on the streets rather than my home.
But I am not trying to whine and complain and ask for pity. Though October was difficult for me, I grew a lot through it and I really am glad for these challenges. In November, though my circumstances hadn’t changed, my attitude had. I no longer felt that I would simply die if things didn’t work out as I’d hoped they would; instead, I began to truly believe that God’s grace is enough to get me through anything (see my “Yes, No, Wait?” blog post).
I also started a social media/PR internship at Harvard Common Press in November. I am helping out with a travel newsletter/blog that they are starting up. I’ve been learning a lot about how companies can use social networking and new media to create an online presence for themselves and inspire people to visit their website.
In December, my old roommate moved out, and my new roommate will be moving in any day now. I’m still waiting to hear about a job I interviewed for, but things sound fairly promising. (But again, I should not count my chickens before they hatch!) I finished up my first semester of classes, which ended up being really fun and enlightening. And now I’m back in Minnesota for Christmas and New Year’s.
2009 was a defining year of my life, and I am so glad that I took the risk of moving to Boston. I am looking forward to new challenges and triumphs in 2010.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Part of Myself
“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here...You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since—on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets...” ~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Isn’t this Dickens quote beautiful? Melodramatic, poetic, filled with emotion and imagery. I thought I’d begin my blog post with this quote even though (or perhaps, because) nothing I write will be able to compare in tone or technique.
I am back in Minnesota for Christmas break, and I’ve been here since December 22. I haven’t had a moment to write a blog post until now because I’ve been spending as much time as possible catching up with friends and family members. However, as I usually do on breaks from school, I came down with a cold, so I’m forcing myself to take it easy this afternoon and try to recuperate. My original plan was to keep myself super busy and try to trick my body into thinking I wasn’t on break and hence keep the cold at bay. It didn’t work, unfortunately. So I had my secretary and life planner (i.e., myself) clear my schedule. On the up side, that gives me time to write.
Since returning to Minnesota, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on how people, places, and things can become a part of myself.
Things
I’ll begin with the “things” category, as it seems the silliest and least consequential of the three. Here’s one prominent example: About two weeks before flying back to Minnesota, on an otherwise uneventful Saturday evening, I lost one of the fake teeth on my retainer (my two lateral incisor teeth are fake and will eventually be more permanently implanted in my mouth but are currently only attached to a retainer). I had a really important job interview on the upcoming Tuesday, just three days after the tooth fell off, and I doubted that the retainer could be fixed in time.
Imagining myself going to the interview with a missing tooth conjured up feelings from my middle school days in which I was too self-conscious to show my teeth when I smiled due to the noticeable gaps in the front of my mouth. When I got my first pair of fake teeth in eighth grade, I felt like a whole new person. Suddenly I could flash a sparkling smile or laugh without putting my hand over my mouth.
A few days before the “tooth incident,” I told my mom on the phone, “I think I finally recovered from being a seventh-grade girl,” meaning that I thought I had gotten over all or most of the insecurities and awkwardness that I had assimilated into my self-image during middle school. Even though I now consider myself to be a confident person, losing that tooth made me realize that a small piece of plastic could be an important element in my identity. I was shocked to think that a personality trait like confidence could be so easily jeopardized by such a tiny object.
However, I convinced myself to get over my insecurity from missing a tooth tolerably well. I went to tutor in Emerson’s Writing Center without it, and I smiled my normal, toothy smile. And no one even seemed to notice! At least, no one commented or stared. Fortunately though, my parents mailed me an old retainer which arrived in time for my interview.
While my fake teeth are a part of myself in all locations, my car is a part of myself only in Minnesota. In Boston, I love taking public transportation and walking everywhere. It’s fun and relatively convenient, and it’s just my lifestyle there. In Minnesota, however, I feel that I simply cannot be myself or live my normal life without a car. So when my car broke down a couple days ago, I felt quite at a loss as to how I was going to experience all that I’d hoped to experience during my short stay back in my home state. Fortunately, the car was able to be fixed within 24 hours, so I didn’t have to find out how difficult life would have been here without it. But again, the loss of a mere thing had caused me to feel naked and unsure.
Places
It feels almost shallow (though understandable) for things to partially define my identity. But places, on the other hand, seem like they ought to be an integral part of who I am. In fact, I started my two blogs (Albion Adventures and Bella Bostonian) when I visited or moved to a new location. Three cities now flow in my veins: Minneapolis, London, and Boston.
Returning to Minneapolis has been interesting. In some ways, everything seems the same. The Eden Prairie Mall, I-494, and Uptown are all exactly where they were when I left, and I’m able to drive to all these familiar places without really thinking. But in other ways, my home town looks different now that Boston has become a part of myself.
For one thing, I honestly used to be a little intimidated to go to new, fun places in the Cities. I always wanted to be the type of person who would just go “out on the town” and try out anything and everything, but I usually felt like it was a lot more effort than it was worth. After a semester in Boston, I literally crave experiencing these new places and trying new things. I’ve gone on Yelp.com several times since I’ve been home and tried out Cuzzy’s Bar and Grill and made a short visit to Club 331, neither of which I’d been to before. For New Year’s Eve, I’m planning to go to the Elixir Lounge for the first time, and I certainly hope that I’ll be able to experience many other great places in the coming weeks. The Bostonian side of me has made me more confident and adventurous, and I’m happy to see that these traits are staying with me even back in Minnesota.
People
And of course, it goes without saying that the people in my life are a part of myself. The best part about being back in Minnesota is seeing my friends and family face-to-face and catching up with people I haven’t spoken with in months (or even longer). I am so grateful for the world of cell phones and computers which has enabled me to stay in touch with these people even while living 1400 miles away. Nevertheless, there’s something very special about the times when we actually get to see each other in person and experience life together.
It’s also been amazing to me how quickly people in Boston have become a part of myself. Though I’ve only been there a few short months, I have been so blessed with a wonderful support network of friends.
Being back in Minnesota for 3 ½ weeks has made me realize that I still live in two worlds. Of course, my life really is in Boston now. But at the same time, it’s been so easy to pick up my old life in Minneapolis where it left off (at least in some ways; of course I don’t have a job or a place of my own here). While on the one hand that means that I inevitably miss out on things in each of my two worlds at times, on the other hand, I’m just so grateful to have the opportunity to experience these different things, places, and people. This is exactly what I’d hope to be doing in my young 20’s—making the most of every moment, every experience, every challenge, every opportunity.
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